Demystifying the Science and Art of Political Polling - By Mark Blumenthal

The NYT Reader's Guide to Polls

August 29, 2006

Jack Rosenthal, a former senior editor of the New York Times, filled in as the guest Public Editor" this past Sunday and devoted the column to a remarkable "Reader's Guide to Polls." The column (which also includes a kind reference...[More...]

Even More on Measurement Error

July 27, 2006

Tuesday's post on a question wording experiment by Rasmussen Reports yielded some interesting comments and email. Here is a sample. The Rasmussen questions poses four answer categories (strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove or strongly disapprove) while the traditional job...[More...]

Rasmussen Update: A Lesson in Measurement Error

July 25, 2006

Although still playing catch-up on the "day job," I want to highlight something that has appeared without fanfare over the last week on Bush job approval page on the Rasmussen Reports website. Rasmussen, as most regular readers know, conducts surveys...[More...]

Words Worth Remembering

May 31, 2006

One of the great rewards of writing this blog is the incredible diversity of its readers -- everyone from ordinary political junkies to the some of the most respected authorities in survey research. I heard indirectly from one of the...[More...]

MP on NSA Polls on CBS Public Eye

May 26, 2006

Today I accepted an invitation to contribute to the "Outside Voices" feature on the CBS News blog "Public Eye." My post -- about lessons learned from the conflicting NSA telephone records polls -- is now up. Here's my bottom line:...[More...]

Generic Ballot: What Does it Measure?

May 25, 2006

Several readers have asked for my opinion on the so-called "generic vote" or "generic ballot" asked on national surveys to gauge Congressional vote preference. Given the obvious inability to tailor a national question to match 435 individual House races, this...[More...]

More on Rasmussen, Immigration & Third Parties

May 8, 2006

Today, thanks to pollster Scott Rasmussen, we have an update on that hypothetical third-party/immigration question he asked a few weeks ago on one of his automated surveys. Largely the result of a dialogue on that question involving Mickey Kaus and...[More...]

The Question That Answers Itself

April 21, 2006

A few weeks ago, our friend Mickey Kaus described a question asked on a recent Time Magazine poll as having "comically biased wording." I was not ready to be quite so harsh about that particular poll. Well, this week courtesy...[More...]

Rasmussen and Party ID - Part I

April 13, 2006

And speaking of putting the results of the new "automated" surveys under a microscope, we have some new data this week on party identification from automated pollster Scott Rasmussen. These data provide us with another opportunity to compare Rasmussen's results...[More...]

The Perils of Double Negatives

March 21, 2006

Gallup's David Moore has posted an analysis this morning (free for today only) with an important lesson on how to write - or perhaps, how not to write - survey questions. The lesson: Double negatives confuse respondents. Put another way,...[More...]

"Professional pollster Mark Blumenthal started Mystery Pollster to provide better interpretation of polling results and methodology... offers much needed help to Political Wire readers" - Political Wire